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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24844609">Everybody Tries</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/DameRuth/pseuds/DameRuth'>DameRuth</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Flowers [35]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Drug Use, F/M, Rebound relationships</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 06:20:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,300</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24844609</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/DameRuth/pseuds/DameRuth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Forgetting is harder than Rose expects. (Post-Doomsday AU)</p>
<p>[Continuing the Teaspoon imports, originally posted 2009.04.16.]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Mickey Smith/Rose Tyler, Rose Tyler/Original characters</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Flowers [35]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/14017</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Everybody Tries</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A <a href="http://www.majiksfanfic.com/phpbb/viewforum.php?f=101">Support Stacie auction</a> ficlet for Gillian_Taylor/dark_aegis, who asked for: "'Verse: Flowers-verse:</p>
<p> <span>This one sprang ready-formed to mind, rather like Athena, and suddenly made me understand why Emilie Autumn's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mAwlMHkwgc">"Rose Red"</a> was automatically added to my "Flowers!verse soundtrack" the minute I heard it (I really wasn't sure why it seemed so right at the time . . .).  The title is a quote from that song.  The lyrics are transcribed in the YT page description, for the curious.</span></p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <span>There's also an oblique reference in this story to a story that hasn't been written yet, but it will all become clear eventually, if people are still following along by that point.  Written in one single gut-wrenching keyboard-scream, like a lot of Flowers material, and un-beta'ed except by me (for fair warning . . .).  Also, a great honking pile of these incentive fics are coming out in present tense.  Dunno why.  *Shrugs*  Like muses *ever* make sense . . .</span><br/></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After the worst day of her life on a windswept beach in Norway, Rose has to face the possibility that she may never see the Doctor again.  Her heart might not believe, but her heart’s never been the smartest part of her.  So she sets out to convince her mind, and, even easier (she thinks) her body.<br/>
<br/>
She and the Doctor might never have been lovers in truth, but towards the end it hadn’t mattered much; his touch, cool and constant — on her hand, her shoulder, the back of her neck — had grown to substitute for other, more human forms of contact.<br/>
<br/>
Maybe he’d been right, she thinks.  Maybe she should have spent more time with her own species.<br/>
<br/>
---<br/>
<br/>
The less said about her night of mutually attempted, belated reunion sex with Mickey after their return from Norway, the better.<br/>
<br/>
Fortunately for them both, they remain friends afterwards.<br/>
<br/>
---<br/>
<br/>
It’s a funny thing, being Pete Tyler’s daughter in this world.  He’s famous, and so, suddenly, is she.  More than famous — she has a mysterious origin, youth, and her single status going for her.  The tabloids cast her as a fairytale princess, a long-lost Rapunzel freed from some distant tower.<br/>
<br/>
Ambitious young (and not so young) men flock to her at her few rare public social appearances.  Some of them, to their credit, are smitten with dreams of romance, but more see money and status bundled with an unobjectionably pretty face and lithe figure.  Her appalled urge to flee is taken as challenging aloofness, which doesn’t help.<br/>
<br/>
Dale is a famous football player, the Beckham of his world; he’s tall, gorgeous, ripped, and he wants into her pants.  It’s a simple enough motive and Rose decides it’s refreshing.  They meet at a charity ball, and end up together in a back room.  The sex is hard, fast and good; it performs admirably as a physical anesthetic.<br/>
<br/>
Three weeks along, Rose finds him doing drugs in her bedroom at the Tyler mansion, the same house where her family — including her new baby <i>brother</i> — lives.  Furious, she explodes at Dale.  He responds with verbal belligerence and she informs him he has five minutes to get out of her sight and out of her home before she calls the authorities.<br/>
<br/>
He responds by attempting to escalate verbal belligerence into physical belligerence and discovers a major difference between Rose Tyler and the average rich socialite.  Rose has grown up in a rough neighborhood, traveled with a pair of protective ex-soldiers eager to teach her a wide range of survival skills, and passed every Torchwood self-defense course with flying colors.<br/>
<br/>
In the end, Rose calls both an ambulance and the police; Dale needs the services of the first before the latter can deal with him.  She is acquitted on self-defense grounds; Dale is sent up for possession and attempted assault.  The tabloids go gleefully insane.<br/>
<br/>
On the up side, Rose finds herself suddenly given a wide berth at cocktail parties.<br/>
<br/>
---<br/>
<br/>
Stan is an accountant working for her father in a mundane, Vitex capacity.  He is brave enough to speak to her in a way that lets her know he’s interested, but polite enough not to pressure her.  He’s also very bright, possessed of a dry, quiet wit that allows him to make jokes about her springing fully-formed from her father’s brow without trying to take it one step further and dig for information about her past.<br/>
<br/>
They slip into a relationship so smoothly and easily it startles Rose.  He calls her his Athena and makes her laugh; in bed he is competent, if unexciting.  Still, in his stable, quiet presence, Rose finds a certain peace.<br/>
<br/>
Then, one late night in bed, he speaks of the future, of homes and children and mortgages.  He doesn’t name names, but he doesn’t need to.  Rose smiles and nods, but all the while her heart is crumbling into dry, dead sand.<br/>
<br/>
The next day, she stops taking his calls and avoids him with great dedication until he finally gives up.  It’s not fair, she knows, that she never tells him why, but she fools herself that it’s kinder to him.  In reality, it’s kinder to <i>her</i>, because it saves her having to put into words the things she’s trying to pretend no longer matter.<br/>
<br/>
---<br/>
<br/>
Tim is a new recruit to Torchwood, in Rose’s section and under her command.  He’s just nineteen, full of himself and with reason.  He’s good — he’s very good — the new hotshot, showing up everyone else with his raw skill.   He’s fond of wearing suits that remind her of the Doctor and his sharp, bright smile reminds her of Jack.  He sets his sights on Rose immediately, and she can tell he’s never been turned down by any woman he fancies; they tumble for him like bowling pins, she’s sure.  Amused and intrigued, Rose teases him for a while, then allows herself to be tumbled.<br/>
<br/>
It’s wrong, in a whole variety of ways, but it’s also right.  Tim lives balanced on the thin, heady wave-crest of the moment, and in that he reminds her very much of herself and a life she once lived.  It’s attractive to find that sense of immediate timelessness wrapped up in a human lover, so she lets it carry her along.  She doesn’t fool herself that it will last much past the day Tim becomes bored with having bagged the Director’s daughter, but she finds she can live comfortably with that knowledge.<br/>
<br/>
Then, after a month or so, Tim’s brash bravado is his downfall and his attempt to deal with a bad situation single-handedly causes him to be captured by the aliens he’s hunting.<br/>
<br/>
They, in turn, are also hunters, fond of sentient prey.  They prefer to keep their meat alive and conscious for as long as possible through the devouring process . . . and they are very good at what they do.  By the time Rose and the rest of her team come to the rescue, Tim’s legs are all but gone and so is his mind.<br/>
<br/>
Torchwood’s physicians consult, and declare that the basic core of Tim’s personality might be rescued if he can forget the cause of his trauma.  The rest of his body is healthy, and will heal.<br/>
<br/>
Normally Rose loathes the use of retcon, but in this case she signs the authorization papers without hesitation.  Shortly thereafter, Tim is released to his anxious family (who, blessedly, have no idea of what his recent employment has involved), with the story of a terrible car crash that took his legs and a few months’ worth of his recent memories.<br/>
<br/>
Tim being Tim, he rallies after a first round of shock and depression.  It helps that the accident supposedly took place on a Vitex-related business trip, earning him lifelong worker’s compensation for job-related injuries and freeing him from worries about material needs.<br/>
<br/>
The last report on Tim that Rose bothers to read describes his hard work in physical therapy and his request to join a medical research program studying neural-net prostheses.  He says, in his application, that it’s at least an adventure he can have that might help others in the process.<br/>
<br/>
She smiles wistfully as she closes the file folder.  There’s no point in reading more; it’s not like she can risk visiting him, ever, and triggering memories he shouldn’t have.  She knows him, and knows he’ll be fine — as fine as he can be — from now on.<br/>
<br/>
---<br/>
<br/>
After that, Rose spends her nights alone until the Wolf comes to find her.<br/>
</p><hr/>
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<p><span class="u">Disclaimer:</span>  All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners.  The original characters and plot are the property of the author.  No money is being made from this work.  No copyright infringement is intended.<br/>
<br/>
This story archived at <a href="http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=30391">http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=30391</a></p>
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